June 2006 • PC Matic Blog

OpenOffice.org Office Productivity Suite

Lyle / June 30, 2006

OpenOffice.org 2.0 was released in October 2005 and is proving to be a formidable contender in the office productivity suite arena. The fully featured open-source suite is freely distributed and is a direct competitor of Microsoft Office. The suite contains word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, graphic and database modules. It can read and write most of the of the file formats found in Microsoft Office and many other applications.

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Vista – RAM Guzzler

chengrob / June 19, 2006

In 1985, I remember fondly opening the box to my first PC. It had 768K of memory, a 6 Mhz processor, and a 10 MB hard drive. It was a state of the art, technological marvel. I wrote my master’s thesis in a program called EZ Writer, and I planned my life and balanced my books in Lotus 123. It did everything I wanted it and more. I never thought it was slow, except when I saved to the 5.25 inch floppy.

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Spyware Information Center

PC Matic Cybersecurity / June 16, 2006

Since PC Pitstop opened in March 2000, we’ve tested and optimized more than a million computers. During that time, spyware has become a growing problem that threatens the stability and performance of your PC.
Our statistics indicate that more than 20% of PC’s have some sort of spyware active in memory, stealing CPU cycles, using up system resources, delivering unwanted advertising, and often creating system instability. Worse yet, spyware can threaten your privacy.

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Dirty Spyware Tricks

chengrob / June 15, 2006

If you had a complete knowledge of what most spyware was doing to your system, you would never agree to install it. So how does it end up installed on so many PCs? Here are some of the dirty tricks that spyware uses to worm its way onto your system and stay there. (Not all spyware uses every technique.)

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June 2006 Newsletter

PC Matic Cybersecurity / June 12, 2006

Commentary: Vista – RAM Guzzler
New Test: Try our Vista Readiness Test
Windows Tip: For those with reading glasses…
Research: Close to 3/4 of PC’s are not Vista Ready
Windows Tweak: Recover previous hard drive space

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Gator Information Center

PC Matic Cybersecurity / June 10, 2006

The Gator Corporation makes several free applications that are distributed over the Internet. (On October 30, 2003, the company changed its name to Claria Corporation, but continues to operate in the same way it did before the name change.) Gator/Claria products are often delivered to end-users by being bundled with other applications or through “drive-by downloads” that pop up an ActiveX dialog and start the installation process if you say “Yes”.

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Overclocking

maxpc / June 10, 2006

Overclocking is the process of manipulating the CPU and other components of your computer to run faster than the manufacturers rated speed. Why would you want to overclock your computer? Overclocking can improve performance in tasks such as resource-intensive games, programs running large databases, extensive graphics editing, and video rendering. The budget conscious could also save money on their processor by purchasing a cheaper low-end CPU that can be overclocked to higher specs. And there’s always the bragging rights of having that really fast, super-tweaked system.

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PC Pitstop’s Top Dawg Challenge!

maxpc / June 10, 2006

Who’s the Fastest? Are you the Top Dawg?

Our New Sponsor, Click Here for a Special Promotion.

It’s time to take the Top Dawg Challenge to the next level. We are so excited to have Western Digital as the sponsor of the Top Dawg Challenge. WD Raptor drives are the fastest drives on the planet, and all decent high end PCs have at least two Raptor drives inside them. Now our search continues for the fastest PCs in the land. Race your PCs often to compare your results against the competition.

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70% of PC’s are not Vista Ready

Lyle / June 8, 2006

Microsoft has released their recommended hardware requirements for their new operating system called Vista.

PC Pitstop compares those RAM, CPU and Hard Drive requirements against the hardware found in systems being processed through our on-line tests to determine the percentage of PC’s that do not meet Microsoft’s recommended requirements. Also shown is a historical look at the percentages of PC’s that did not meet the recommended requirements for Microsoft’s XP operating system for the months prior to it’s launch.

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